Within You
by Jennifer Longbottom
Summary: This is a little sort of songfic from Barty Crouch Jnr.'s POV, thinking about his life just before he goes to Azkaban.


A/N: This is from Barty Crouch Jnr.'s POV. I have to say it – I like him. He is, in fact, one of my favourite characters. I want to know why he went to the Death Eaters. So I wrote this thing. And I have to say it – he really does _not_ like his father, does he?

Disclaimer: 'Within You Without You' belongs to the Beatles, everything else except Crabbe and Goyle Snrs.'s first names belong to JKR. Oh! And I own Romulus, though I don't think anyone else would want him, 'cause he's a git – and believe me, that's putting it mildly.

**__**

Within You

I was in Slytherin.

For some people, that says everything. My father was not pleased. I tried to explain to him that Slytherins were merely extremely ambitious and usually, too, they were clever. People like Luther Crabbe and Jeremiah Goyle were the exception rather than the rule.

Of course, he ignored me. Typical.

Quite frankly, it drove me nuts. Every time I came home from school, we would quarrel. And quarrel. And quarrel. My mother was often weeping because she could not make us reconcile.

The only reason I came home at all was to see my mother – her and Winky the house-elf, devoted to both my father and I. She amused me, I was fond of her. She was forever worrying over some tidbit or other, usually something to do with me. 

But my home-life was dominated by my father. Neither of us could stand the other, and as soon as I was old enough, I moved out.

At school, I was fairly popular. I got high marks. I frequently came top of the year. I played Seeker for the Slytherin Quidditch team from when I was fourteen to when I was eighteen, and rarely failed to get the Snitch. However, when we played Gryffindor, we focused more on the Chasers, because James Potter was quite certainly the most dangerous player on the pitch. I believe he scored more for Gryffindor in one match than Hufflepuff managed to score in a whole season – Chasers _and_ Seeker. But that's another story.

I think Quidditch was my prop and mainstay during those years. It was only in my seventh year that I began to listen seriously to Lucius Malfoy.

Of course, he was much older, about five years my senior. But I often ran into him in Hogsmeade, and eventually I realised that these meetings weren't purely accidental.

I dislike Malfoy intensely, I always have. But I will say this for him: he's an extremely interesting and persuasive talker.

When I went home for the Christmas holidays, I had one great, final row with my father. We said bitter, furious things to each other which we meant, and in my case, the shafts went home.

"Why don't you just clear off and become a Death Eater, Barty? Just to annoy your father even more. Go! Go on, then. Go and submit yourself to the Dark Lord."

That was his parting shot. And for the first time in my life, I took my father's advice.

"You must know by now what I'm about, Barty," said Malfoy one night in the Three Broomsticks.

I glanced around at my surroundings. Couples drunkenly kissing and some doing a bit more than that. A hag was screeching out the latest Icy Veela hit. No one was paying any attention to us.

I gazed levelly back at Malfoy.

"Yes, I know. You're trying to recruit me."

Malfoy looked pained.

"I wouldn't put it so bluntly as that – "

"Don't gloss over the nastier aspects of it," I told him brutally. "You want to know if I'm interested. Well, I am. I want in."

He smiled slightly. "If you put it like that…"

And I was committed. For better or for worse.

Of course, once I became of _them_, I had to do my own share of recruiting. I was good at that. I used my looks mostly. There was a noticeable increase, Malfoy told me later, in the number of female Death Eaters after I joined. Not that I was especially handsome or anything…

One of my companions, Romulus Lupin, I think his name was, disappeared in suspicious circumstances about six months after I joined. I'm not sure how it was accomplished, but I'm fairly sure that his twin brother Remus had something to do with it. You see, they didn't get on that well, and also, Remus conveniently did a disappearing act around that time as well…I'm fairly sure he managed to lead a double life, aided and abetted by his own friends and Romulus's girlfriend (whom, funnily enough, Remus became engaged to shortly after).

That was a rather bizarre side-topic. I never liked Lupin anyway. Although Remus is an Auror, and if Dumbledore has his own league, almost definitely a member of that, I prefer him to Romulus. Odd, isn't it? But Remus is, and always has been, infinitely more interesting than Romulus.

But I have been sidetracked.

We were talking – about the space

Between us all

And the people – who hide themselves

Behind a wall of illusion

Never glimpse the truth – then it's far too

Late – when they pass away

Strange, isn't it, how people see the same person differently? In my mother's eyes I was her courageous, ambitious, clever, hard-working son, who was led astray by people like 'those nasty Malfoys'. My father thought of me as a weak, cunning, selfish child, who made his own headstrong choices, and was going to have to answer for them when the time came.

And these were my _parents_. If they could have such differing opinions, how was anybody else going to react to my personality?

Better not answer that.

To return to the point, being branded with the Dark Mark is one of the most painful things you can imagine. Of course, it is necessarily less agonising than Crucio, but it is not exactly cool and soothing.

I don't even think that was the point. However, please excuse the way my mind works.

I am barely nineteen years old as I write this. I believe fully that power is everything. Love is a weakness in the armour, sadly, but it is an enjoyable weakness. The trick is to enjoy it from many different people, then you have no commitments and a lot of pleasure. And it's not soppy.

A very great Muggle writer by the name of Oscar Wilde said: 'Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.' I don't see the point in brooding too much. Reflection is healthy, brooding is disturbing.

__

*

We were talking – about the love that's

Gone so cold and the people

Who gain the world and lose their soul

They don't know – they can't see – are you

One of them?

Damn.

You know something? I used to believe my father had some affection for me. Even after I joined the Death Eaters and ceased to care about these things.

Fat chance.

He's thrown me to the Dementors, for God's sake. You'd think that he'd spare his only son that.

It's not like there was any proof.

Of course, I did torture the Longbottoms – we got some very useful information out of them. Then of course, we got caught.

I don't think I could have felt any more horror than I did when he sentenced us – Sonia and Jason Lestrange, Ivo Browning and me – to Azkaban. I was his _son_, for crying out loud, and he didn't even care.

My belief in the brotherhood of man died that day. Not, of course, that the flame had ever burned particularly brightly, but there had always been a hard core of stubbornness that refused to believe that my father was indifferent to me.

Well, technically, he wasn't. He just hated me. Hated me more than anything. And on a final note – 

How do you know who's good and who's evil? Lucius Malfoy has been under the Imperius Curse for five years now, you know. At least, that's what _he_ says to the Ministry. God forbid that I should ever be under it that long.

Try to realise it's all within yourself

No one else can make you change

And to see you're really only small

And life flows on within you and without you

Some final note. I'm probably never going to finish this. Stories never die, and this is interesting – I hope.

When I first went into Lord Voldemort's service, I dreamt of fame and glory. Of recognition. But instead I found I was a little fish in a big, big pond.

If I died, I don't anyone would care. Not now. My mother would weep, but my father would be angry with her, and she would stop crying.

But I cannot – I will not – change. They say a leopard cannot change his spots. It's true enough. You can change your hair colour, your facial features, you religion – most things – but you cannot change the essence of your personality. That is who you are, and it will always triumph.

The Dementors are approaching. I feel this sudden, inexplicable need for someone to hold me, to love me. Sirius Black looks at me sympathetically from across the corridor. It's not fair. He shouldn't be here. It is ironic that those who are guilty have a trial, while the innocent are condemned without mercy. It's absurd, any one of these guilty Death Eaters could have told my father that Black was never one of us.

Then again, who'd listen? Who would _want _to listen to a load of raving mad prisoners?

A now familiar wave of freezing sickness sweeps over me.

I need my mother…

__

When you've seen beyond yourself – 

Then you may find peace of mind, is

Waiting there – 

And the time will come when you see

We're all one

And life flows on within you and without you…


End file.
